The biggest reason my blog entries are so disjointed and scattershot is that my eldest daughter always runs the laptop's batteries to nil Facebooking and YouTubing (like these terms are verbs, be afraid for the English language). So, I have under 20% of battery life which leaves little time for editing. And besides, who cares anyway? Mrs. Norvell, my 5th grade teacher, doesn't read this thing (I hope).So last week I posted a little about scary movies I loved, and made them pre-1950's. Here's the rest of the list. And, because lists suck, this won't deviate:
Japanese Monster Movies: my brother Tom and I killed many brain cells sitting in front of our old black and white TV (we didn't have a color TV till 1981) watching Godzilla flicks. Like I said before, my mom encouraged it as she loved 'em too. Honestly, watching them now I can't imagine sitting through the films without doing something else. The monsters aren't on-screen all that much and the human drama is.....lacking. More than likely, we were stuck inside on a cold or rainy day playing with our toys and a monster movie was on. I only remembered the "monster fights" after the movie ended. Some good ones? Godzilla (vs. Kong, vs. Smog Monster, vs The Thing). Rodan. Destroy all Monsters. War of the Gargantuas. You can smell the rubber from the suits the actors wore in these cheesy greats.
Night of the Living Dead: 1968. Scared the living daylights outta me. I remember reading a listing in TV Guide when I was 11 or so, describing this as a "cult film" wherein "cannibalistic zombies terrorized a farmhouse." Didn't sound too bad. I think it was on the late late Creature Feature show and I watched it. Scared me sh&tless. It's a claustrophobic flick, gross and gory for its' time, and unsettling in it's "the enemy is ourselves" storyline. It spawned 2 direct sequels in the '80's. A lesser re-make in 1990. A few more direct sequels in the 2000's.......AND just about every zombie movie you see these days. George Romero, the director who came up with the entire "man-eating undead horde" idea was screwed out of being a millionaire due to a mess-up with the rights from this movie. And his idea's been copied so many times that the premise has lost it's ability to scare (zombies are everywhere, even kid's shows now, but Zombieland was great). The first was the best.
The Creeping Flesh: a Hammer horror movie that starred Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. I only recall it because at the end the monster shows up for it's missing finger, and takes Peter Cushing's instead. I still remember the awful cracking sound that's made when the monster removes the man's finger. Icky. I was really little when I saw this (I think 5 or 6) and would sleep with my blanket up over my hands so I could keep all my fingers.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: 1973 (I think). Only the first one was good and scary. It led to the whole "kids in the American wild stumble into crazy bullsh%t" storyline. The first time I saw it, I remember being freaked out by how crazy this movie gets about halfway through. At the beginning, there's some weirdness but after they get to that house it's like an acid trip gone horribly, horribly bad. It's still unsettling, but so imitated and copied that you've seen the story before. Best imitated in Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses, which has it's own gonzo "what the hell was that?" moments but is still just a retread.
Halloween: 1977 or 1978? I guess the first is the best. That's it for slasher movies, in my opinion they sucked as a general rule. They became exercises in camp that became boring. This one wasn't bad. I also have a soft-spot in my heart for Halloween 3, Season of the Witch, that was bizarre in it's departure from all of the characters in the previous 2 movies and had an annoying song in it.
Silence of the Lambs (1991): again, the first was the best. This movie was genuinely unsettling and scary, the story was well-done and the acting was superb. A movie that was not all that gory, but so much gore was implied and discussed that you really didn't need to see it to be creeped out by it.
....and that's it. That's the last movie that really got in my head a bit and weirded me out. I know there've been others realeased since but they all seem to be re-treads of the same old stories. I left out Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity because they are gimmicky, well-done and interesting enough but gimmicky. My wife was spooked by The Strangers, and that had it's moments too. I don't dig the torture flicks like Saw or Hostel or their clones. It's a pretty sad state of affairs for a fan of scary movies....the movies aren't really that scary anymore. But we've all got access to some of these great old flicks I've mentioned, so happy viewing.
No comments:
Post a Comment